The Energy of Nations Risk Blindness and the Road to Renaissance [Paperback]

Systemic global risks of oil supply, climate shock and financial collapse threaten tomorrow's economies and mean businesses and policy makers face huge challenges in fuelling tomorrows world.

Jeremy Leggett gives a personal testimony of the dangers often ignored and incompletely understood - a journey through the human mind, the institutionalization of denial, and the reasons civilizations fail. It is also an account of tantalizing hope, because mobilizing renewables and redeploying energy funding can soften the crash of modern capitalism and set us on a road to renaissance.

 

About the author  Publishers note about the authors credentials and motivations  Acknowledgements  Note on sources and style  Prologue  PART 1: A HISTORY  1. Lies, scaremongering, and affordable oil  2. Under the volcano  3. Doomed to failure  4. Not our responsibility  5. The risk of contingency  6. The small print  7. When the dancing stops  8. This House Believes  9. They will blame us forever  10. As bad as the credit crunch  11. You are the flip side of austerity  12. Houston, its just possible we have a problem  13. The anti Oil Shock Response Plan plan  14. A bollocks subject  15. To the point of being suicidal  16. A new era of fossil fuels  17. More unhinged by the week  PART 2: A FUTURE  18. What next: the anatomy of the biggest crash  19. The power of context: energy and security  20. The choice of roads: people and systems  Notes and references

[Leggett's] insider perspective on the energy business leaves him ideally placed to narrate with authority the story of an industry hurtling towards crisis  and the refusal of its leaders to acknowledge it...